Language Endangerment as Adaptation to Change in Society: Vitality and the Process of Extinction in the Arta Language

Abstract

Language endangerment has been vigorously studied in linguistics since the 1990s, and related studies such as language documentation and revitalization have also flourished. This paper argues that the typical academic discourse on endangered languages has been oversimplified and that language endangerment should be understood as multi-faceted and complex social phenomena. To illustrate the point, this study describes the vitality and the extinction process of Arta, a severely endangered language spoken in the Philippines. It was found that the Arta community is incorporated into a larger group speaking another tribal language, due to their shared cultural identity as hunter-gatherers. It was also shown that Arta speakers strategically choose their language shifts to flexibly cope with the surrounding majority. These findings imply that pessimistic attitudes towards endangered languages by researchers should be relativized.